A Bristol Geek

Making your own Kindle Case with Gaffa Tape!

When the Amazon Kindle was several hundred pounds then spending £30 on a case to protected it seamed like a great investment, but now that a Kindle can be acquired for a little over £100 the cases seam a little over priced! On top of the price many people also like to hold their Kindle directly when they read, something you can’t do with a full case.

Being the true geek that I am I chose to make a case for my Kindle out of Gaffa Tape, the geek’s best friend! I like to think that most problems can be solved with an application of Gaffa Tape, but that is another story!

The biggest plus point of the Gaffa-Kindle (catchy?) is its price, you can get a whole roll for less than a fiver (even from Amazon!) and then a C Sized jiffy bag for around 60p. All in all this case cost around £1.50.  The cheapest case on Amazon at the time of writing is the “Belkin Knitted Kindle Sleeve” for £17.49, which makes the Gaffa-Kindle a great “buy”.

Making the case only takes about five minutes (for an expierenced Gaffa-Crafter like myself, so maybe give yourself fifteen minutes!), and couldn’t be much simpler.  However you need to remember one thing throughout this task, once Gaffa Tape sticks to it’s self it rarely comes unstuck!  To perform this task you will need a roll of standard sized Gaffa Tape (or Duck Tape / Duct Tape / etc) in your chosen colour (try B&Q or even Amazon!), a C Sized Jiffy Bag (try the post office) and a sharp blade (perhaps a stanley knife from B&Q also?).

Making your Gaffa-Kindle

Step 1

Prepare your work space, a cutting mat would be best but if you don’t have access to one then use a hard flat surface. Be aware that you may leave score marks on the surface.

Step 1: Prepare your work space.

Step 2

The first cut you need to make is to remove the flap from the top of the Jiffy Bag, if you were to cover it in Gaffa then it would become to rigid to fold.  The C sized bag is already big enough to hold your Kindle with out the need for a seal.

Step 2: Remove the flap from the Jiffy Bag

Step 3

Cut strips of Gaffa Tape that are about four centimetres longer that the width of the bag, affix this to the bag as shown in the second picture below (starting at the bottom of the bag) and fold the edges around the sides of the bag as shown in the third image.  You can then repeat this to cover one side of the case until you get to the last strip, simply overlap each strip slightly (just under a centimetres).

Step 3: Cutting strips and affixing them to the bag.

Step 4

The final strip on this side needs to overlap the opening of the bag, this requires a few cuts to the tape ensuring it wraps correctly. Once you have made the cuts shown in the next photo just fold the long flap into the inside of the bag.

Step 4: Seal the top edge on one side.

Step 5

Now you just need to cut some more strips of Gaffa Tape to finish off the other side of the bag. These strips just need to be long enough to cover the bits that you folded around earlier. The final strips need to cover the bottom of the bag and the other lip of the opening as you did in step 4, use a cut similar to the previous one (hard to demo as it depends on the size of the tape, etc).

Making a Kindle Case with Gaffa Tape: Step 5

Step 6:

Enjoy your new found Kindle Case!

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When the Amazon Kindle was several hundred pounds then spending £30 on a case to protected it seamed like a great investment, but now that a Kindle can be acquired for a...